"Poke Me" is a Saturday edit page feature in The Economic Times. This feature appears first every Wednesday morning on www.economictimes.com. Best comments from readers will be reproduced on the edit page of the Saturday edition of the newspaper. So be poked and fire in your comments to us right away.

It’s very simple. The govt. should act tough in ensuring no pollution of rivers by industry the biggest culprit and municipalities that dump untreated sewage into rivers even in metros. Cities and towns should provide treated water in large scale to industries, commercial establishment and even big complexes of residence and they can all be given incentives and forced to go for water treatment. Almost 60-70 % of the water can be reused and making rain water harvesting compulsory will the do the trick of having no water shortage. Farmers who get free power should be forced to go for RWH and all residences must be penalised for not having RWH. Look at dealination of sea water as a last resort and we will have clean rivers and no water shortage ever.

Kanakasabhai Natarajan (chennai)

It is sad how the future of our rich country will be of water scarcity. India is only a poor example of democracy when it comes to hearing the voices of the people. The river water is free for now, but what if it is not in the future--the most affected will be the people at the bottom of the pyramid of power. The death of the poor in millions will not touch the policy makers until there is a dead stop to all policies. Corruption, as always, is blamed. And what is the common man to do? Rally relentlessly till the problem is solved. Our only strength has been in rallying for a cause and making sure we are heard. We can call the strikes a bad form of protest, but what are we left with after all? Finally, we are not the kind of people who will rally unless the wolf is at the door, or unless we have a visionary leading us. Until then, we have the bread and we are happy it is not stolen. We are unaware that the rot is already happening and it will only be a short time before the bread is unfit for eating. But to know or to act, the common man needs a nudge, the awakening call to rise to action. And rally seems to be our only power in a democracy. Rally productively, relentlessly and move to solutions that are beneficiary.

The policies that set into motionan upward spiral in well-being are making sure kids have enough education so they can read, and educating women, especially mothers. [Those] mothers have fewer children who are better educated,...

By JAANA REMES ET AL Broad-based income growth has diverged from productivity growth, because declining labour share of income and rising inequality are eroding median wage growth, and the rapidly rising costs of housing and...

We need to address the real problem: the “social side of strategy”, arising from corporate politics, individual incentives and human biases. How? With evidence. We examined publicly available information on dozens of variables for thousands...